Hell's Gate Read online

  The whores at the next table were loud and Ginny couldn’t help but listen as she nursed her coffee. She imagined for a moment that she was back in Miss Gertie’s kitchen with Eunice and Rachel and the other girls. She missed them in that moment though she hadn’t really thought about them these last couple of days. She’d had companionship with them, if not much more, girls like her who knew how she felt and when to lend a sympathetic ear when things got bad. Ginny ached for that. She felt alone in that moment, so much that no amount of noise or laughter or elbows in her side could bridge the seas that surrounded her. She finished her coffee and fled.

  Ginny left feeling better in body, though her spirit still lagged. The night had turned a little damp and there was a chill to the air. Ginny turned up her collar, feeling almost refreshed by the cold. The long rest and hot meal had taken the edge off her last night at Miss Gertie’s, the blood and that animal Johnny Suds. Ginny smiled grimly and walked toward the Bowery.

  * * *

  She was wide-awake and couldn’t think of going back to her room, so soon she found herself walking toward the Bowery a few blocks away. The lights from thousands of bulbs lit the night sky in that direction, sending up a glow that silhouetted the tops of the tenements for blocks. She could hear music too, faintly at first, a mix of instruments and styles that she mistook for the jangling of harness buckles and the bump and clop of wheels and hooves. As she got closer it was as if a dozen bands were parading in the distance, each playing a different tune. A constant hum came from everywhere and nowhere. She could see an organ-grinder working the block, hear a German band banging out a drinking song from somewhere around the corner and from a place Ginny couldn’t identify there were strains of “My Pearl is a Bowery Girl,” sung in a passable tenor. “She sets them all crazy, a spieler a daisy, my pearl is a Bowery girl.”

  Ginny had heard about the Bowery, of course, but had never actually been there. At Miss Gertie’s none of the girls were allowed out much. The Bowery was never on the itinerary.

  The crowds thickened as she drew closer to the cacophonous, glowing mecca of all things sinful. She noticed too that the vast majority around her were men, every one sporting a gray derby it seemed, with flashy clothes in bright colors. Plaids and stripes, the louder the better, were worn with flair and swagger as if every man carried a chip on his shoulder. What women she saw were of the low variety with gaudy makeup and trashy, close-fitting rags. They chewed gum, almost every one, making a show of the lips and mouth. They kissed their lovers openly, when and where they pleased.

  The whores were little different, distinguished mainly by their clustering in little groups, trolling for customers, leading men into darkened doorways, fighting with their pimps. None of the girls at the house had ever walked the streets. That was where whores ended their careers. Ginny had always heard that such women were the most degraded, the most vile, their looks coarsened by alcohol or made lifeless by hop. She’d been told too that they bore the scars of angry pimps and rough customers and that the worst of them were walking disease factories. It went without saying that any man who’d lie with one was only slightly better.

  Ginny watched them, taking a certain comfort in knowing that she had worked in the best of houses. Only the best and most beautiful girls would ever see the inside of a place like Miss Gertie’s and she had been one of those. She felt superior to these tramps and with a small start thought that she had never felt superior to anyone before. But then the realization struck her that if she’d stayed at Miss Gertie’s it would have been only a matter of time before another Johnny Suds scarred her, her beauty faded, and that she’d end her career here, whistling to Bowery boys.

  Ginny came upon a small covey of whores just off the Bowery. They were clustered around a sandwich man. He had a wooden sign draped over his front and back, held up by straps over his shoulders. THE GRAND MUSEUM, it said on the back, HAS WONDERS FROM AROUND THE GLOBE, SEE MULITA THE SNAKE CHARMER, JO-JO THE DOG-FACED BOY, A PIECE OF THE TRUE HOLY CROSS, AND TORTURE IMPLEMENTS OF THE SPANISH! The girls were laughing and throwing their skirts up at the gaunt, hollow-eyed bummer. He grinned vacantly as he shuffled by them, but was stopped by one of the girls, who stepped in front of him, bent over, and threw her skirts over her back. She wasn’t wearing panties and her pale ass stopped the sandwich man in midshuffle. He swayed before the sight as though he might fall over. The girls screamed with laughter. The sandwich man recovered from his shock though and lunged forward, both hands out like a child after a Christmas toy. The girl was too quick for him. She jumped out of his grasp with a laugh, turned, and slapped him hard across the face. He staggered to one side, where his ankle turned on the curb. He was pitched into the street, his sandwich boards clattering. Ginny stood still, fascinated and appalled as the man struggled to rise while men stepped around him and a wagon swerved. The signs were too much for him and at first he tried to roll like a turtle on its back. The whores shrieked and clapped their thighs as a loose circle of onlookers mocked the man’s feeble attempts. No one helped. It was well known that sandwich men were the lowest of the low, so ruined by alcohol, syphilis, opium, or God knew what else, as to be barely human. Even ragpickers and night-soilers had higher status.

  At last the man stopped struggling and lay there beneath his sign, the words THE ARMLESS WONDER, ONLY AT THE GRAND MUSEUM emblazoned in red letters across his front. The crowd didn’t dissipate for some minutes though, seemingly unsatisfied with the show. There were taunts and someone threw a beer on him but he didn’t move. At length a group of sailors picked him up and set him unsteadily on his feet. He stumbled forward like an automaton and soon melted into the crowd.

  “Hey, sista, you workin’?” a man said to her a few steps further on. He wore a gray derby, tilted to one side, a bright white shirt with a Celluloid collar, a red plaid vest, and gray striped pants with shiny shoes peeking beneath the hems. The clothes were expensive, but the face had heavy, beaten brows, and a nose like a ripe strawberry. “Yer a beaut! What a bundle! C’mon, let’s us have some fun, huh? I’ll take ya spielin’.”

  Ginny didn’t hear the rest. She walked faster, turned the corner heading south, and quickly lost herself in the crowd. The lights were almost blinding after the relative darkness of Forsythe Street. Dime museums, dance halls, pawnshops, bars, and cheap hotels lined the street. Hawkers shouted above the dance hall bands and street musicians. There were others whose sole job seemed to be to push as many people off the sidewalk and into doorways as possible. A man vomited at the curb just a few steps down the street and a woman was shoved into the back of a Black Maria, shouting curses at the cops who’d arrested her. A dance hall’s open doorway gave a brief glimpse of a chorus line doing the cancan, legs kicking high, the audience cheering over the crashing of the band.

  Ginny felt as if she’d been transported to another world where every base instinct was celebrated, raised on high and crowned with electricity. There was a free-for-all jump-and-crackle to the place, animating everything. The men had it in their faces, the women, too. It might have been from Edison’s bulbs, but Ginny didn’t think so. The crowds possessed the true fire. The bulbs were only the reflection.

  The cops she saw seemed jaded and bored. They had the look of men who’d seen everything and strolled with what appeared to be relaxed indifference. Up close their eyes were hard and penetrating as they scanned the crowds, their helmets bobbing among the derbies, bowlers, boaters, and occasional top hats.

  The cops eyed Ginny with interest and even curiosity. Most of the men she passed did. Though she knew she didn’t look her best, she was still a very attractive woman. But that was not the only reason. She was unescorted. Unescorted women on the Bowery were either whores, showgirls, or out of their minds.

  Further on, past a nickel shooting gallery, a wax museum, and a place that advertised TABLEAUX VIVANTS in lurid red letters, Ginny came upon a kinetoscope parlor. A crowd was just bursting from its doors, so she found her progress blocked just in f
ront of the ticket booth. She had heard of kinetoscopes, of course, but had never actually seen one. Her parents had forbidden it, hinting that there was something unsavory or sordid about the places that showed them. The front of the building was all in lights and stills from the pictures were plastered like billboards on the walls, glued one on top of the other. A man shoved Ginny toward the ticket booth. “Just a dime! Just a dime fer a gran’ ol’ time!” he shouted, herding others after her. “Da wondas o’ da woild faw yaw eyes unfoiled.”

  Ginny paid her dime and went inside the dimly lit hall. The fog and reek of cigarettes and the stink of unwashed bodies hit her like a wall, but a piano player in a straw boater by the screen tinkled out a quickstep that kept the crowd moving. The house filled and the lights went down. Suddenly, with the whir of unseen machinery, the screen came to life and the piano jangled dramatically. WHAT HAPPENED ON TWENTY-THIRD STREET, NEW YORK CITY flashed on the screen in black letters. They were gone in less than ten seconds, replaced by a view of the Flatiron Building, looking like the bow of a great ship plowing the concrete of Broadway. Carriages skittered by. Pedestrians walked with quick, jerky movements. A flag could be seen fluttering from atop one of the buildings on the Ladies’ Mile. A horsecar came into view and one passenger jumped down at the corner of Twenty-third and Broadway. It took only a moment for Ginny to get used to the lack of color and only a moment more to feel as though she was actually there, standing by the park as the world put on a show just for her.

  The whole thing lasted only half an hour. There were two more short films accompanied by the hardworking piano player. One was a boxing match, the other a rags-to-riches fable set in a Hester Street tenement. For thirty minutes, Ginny forgot about Johnny Suds, about Miss Gertie, her loneliness, and even about Mike. She remembered him when the lights came up and she saw couples sitting close. She wished he’d been there with her, holding her hand as they filed out into the electric night.

  She was on the corner of Chrystie Street when a man stepped in front of her. “Hey, doll,” he started, the rest she didn’t catch. She’d already grown used to the propositions of strange men and had ceased to listen to their cajolings. Almost every man on the Bowery seemed to be either a pimp or a sport. She’d attracted a string of them, one more insistent than the last. This one was different though. He wouldn’t step aside and wouldn’t quit. He wasn’t rude. In fact, he was almost well mannered in a Bowery sort of way. She could not get a good look at his face though. She knew instinctively how dangerous it was to meet the eyes of a strange man here. He followed her for half a block, talking sweet, asking her where she lived and if she’d like to spiel, which she understood meant some kind of dancing. She shook her head at all of his efforts. He gave up at last but without the bitterness that some men showed at her rejection.

  “Hope I’ll see ya ’round, doll. Me heart’s all but broke till I do,” he said to her back, which drew a little smile across her lips. “I see ya smilin’, doll,” he called after her. “I’ll be here t’morra. Come see me.”

  “Fuckin’ bitch!” Ginny heard the shouting from nearly a block away and turned to see the commotion. The man who’d just been propositioning her was there with another woman, arguing as she gestured wildly, hands cast open.. He hit her with his fist and she fell like a rag doll. Ginny didn’t look back, but she could hear shouted curses and the wailing of the woman. Instead she ran until she could hear the cries no longer.

  16

  PHOTO DAVE STOOD outside Barney’s Old Treehouse Saloon, waiting for Chuck Connors to finish his bullshit. The man had made a career of it, spending half his day conducting tours of the Five Points and Chinatown, the rest spent lubricating his prodigious vocal cords. He was finishing up with some slumming uptown types and a couple of foreigners, giving them one last grisly tale of the Old Brewery and its cellar full of graves. The place had been the most notorious hellhole in the city, disease and murder taking its residents in equal measure. When the place had been torn down, dozens of bodies were found buried under its earthen floor …

  “A word,” Dave said when Connors had finally gotten rid of his tour and approached the door to Barney’s.

  “Huh?” Connors grunted without really looking at Dave.

  “Big Tim,” Dave said, “I got a message from ’im.”

  Connors looked then, looked closely. “Well, Dave, damned if it ain’t yerself. C’mon in.” He led the way to his back table where Chinatown Nellie waited over a nearly empty bottle of gin. “Hey, sweetie, get us a new bottle like a good molly, eh?”

  “Fuck you, Chuckie,” she said, but she got up to do it with a devilish grin nonetheless.

  “Great ass on ’er,” Chuck said, watching her walk to the bar. “That woman gonna kill me wit that ass.”

  “Worse ways to go,” Dave said, though he didn’t look.

  “Yeah,” Chuck said. “So how’s it Tim didn’ come ’imself?”

  “Busy,” Dave said. “He says to tell ya he’ll … he’s gonna … what the hell was that word he used? Tim’s got some words you never did hear of. It was like inter … something.” Dave fished about and a moment later came up with it. “Intercede! That’s it. Tim’s gonna intercede on behalf of your client. Those were his exact words.”

  “Okay,” Chuck said. “Glad to hear it. “He didn’ say when it’s gonna get fixed?”

  “Didn’t say.”

  “What’ll I tell my … ah … friend?” Chuck said. “I mean he’s in a hell of a bind.” Chuck didn’t want to say more to Photo Dave. He wasn’t sure how much Big Tim might or might not have told him about Lionel Saturn or the Knickerbocker Steamship Company.

  “Don’t know. Tell him Big Tim’s gonna intercede. That should fuckin’ well be enough.”

  “’Course it is. ’Course it is.” Chuck said, seeing that Photo Dave had developed a sour frown. “Damned if you ain’t right, an fuck ’im if it ain’t good enough.”

  “Right,” Dave said with one raised eyebrow. He got up to go.

  “Leavin’ without a drink?” Chuck asked. A breach of etiquette in his book.

  “Things to do,” Dave said. “Tim keeps a full schedule doin’ the people’s work. Another time.”

  Chuck waved him off. “Me regards ta Big Tim,” he said so the rest of the bar could hear, before turning toward his girl. “Nellie, you sweet little bundle, sit that bottom on me lap like a good molly an’ we’ll see if we can find the bottom o’ this bottle.”

  17

  “HOW IS THE hand?” Primo asked when he met Mike at the station house the next morning. “The pain, it is keeping you up?”

  “Pain?” Mike said, seeming confused. He knew he wasn’t looking so good. He hadn’t shaved and there were deep circles under his eyes. “Oh, yeah, the hand. Hurts some.”

  “Uh-huh,” Primo said. “You no look so good. Maybe you need a day off.”

  “Ginny,” Mike mumbled as if he hadn’t heard. “She had a … problem at the place an’ they … well. She left.”

  “The girl? The one you sent the flowers?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Mamma mia. You are in love! Look at you. You are like shit from the goat. We will find this girl, no?” Primo said, as if that were a matter of course.

  “And there’s another thing,” Mike added with a weary but satisfied tone. “I learned a little something about the Bottler.”

  “How, the hell did…?”

  “I went after a guy, a guy that Ginny was with … at the house. He needed some straightening out, so…”

  “So you straightened him,” Primo said with a little grin. “But why do I think he is not so straight really.”

  “Yeah, well,” Mike said. “Truth is I nearly killed the bastard. Came that close.”

  “And? What does that have to do with this Bottler?”

  “Everything,” Mike said, then took a deep breath and told Primo what he’d learned from Johnny Suds.

  * * *

  “Okay, so we find the girl—” Primo
started to say once Mike had finished.

  “Maybe,” Mike said as he dropped into his chair.

  “What is this maybe? We will find her. That is all there is to that.”

  “I talked with the captain,” Mike replied. He stopped to check on who was within earshot. “He wants us to see that cop; the one that got stomped by those two guys.”

  “Shit! I was hoping maybe we could get out of that.” Primo threw up his hands “When it rains it comes in the cats and dogs.”

  “You mean it pours,” Mike said. “Suppose you’re right about that.”

  “Right. It pours in cats and dogs.”

  Mike gave a slight shake of his head. “So whadya mean by that anyway? What else is going on?”

  Primo handed him a note. It was written in Italian. The letters were big and jagged like stabs at the page. Whatever it said, it was no love letter. “What’s it say?” Mike asked, turning it over to check the other side. “How’d you get it?”

  Primo pulled a knife from his pocket. It was a stiletto, with a long, thin blade and an ebony handle. Primo raised it and jabbed it down into Mike’s desk, where it quivered dramatically, which seemed to please him somehow. “The note, it was stuck to my door with that. To make a long tale a short story, it says they will cut me up into little pieces and feed me to pigs.” Primo shrugged. “The usual thing.”

  “Pigs?” Mike said, not entirely sure that Primo wasn’t making one of his jokes.